Single purpose devices are having a moment as apparently we’ve all had enough of our smartphones. I’m back to rocking an iPod Classic and now potentially also a pocket sized eReader because eInk.
Some notes on how I setup my InkPalm 5 Mini.
Root
You probably don’t need this, depending on how much you trust a device from China which wasn’t really meant for an international market.
I’m paranoid so mine is only allowed on my ‘guest’ wifi network which has full client isolation, and I rooted it so I can uninstall the maximum amount of stuff and block internet access to all system services.
There’s a great guide by qwerty12 on Github which I followed with success. I had to jump through some extra hoops as mine came with a newer firmware build MAS_EPD105_L8AM105_V11_240307 so I had to extract and patch it myself.
If you’re on the same version, I uploaded my patched image to my Github fork so that may save you some time.
Install Apps
I used adb install to install the F-Droid Classic APK, and then from there the following:
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeyboard/
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.koreader.launcher.fdroid/
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/info.plateaukao.einkbro/
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.jkuester.unlauncher/
- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingandroid/
Remove Bloatware
I removed a lot, so far it seems to not have destroyed the device. YMMV.
adb shell su
pm uninstall --user 0 com.sohu.inputmethod.sogou.oem
pm uninstall --user 0 com.jd.app.reader
pm uninstall --user 0 cn.wps.moffice_eng.lite
pm uninstall --user 0 com.tencent.weread.eink
pm uninstall --user 0 com.zhangyue.read.iReader.eink
pm uninstall --user 0 com.moan.browser
pm uninstall --user 0 com.moan.appstore
pm uninstall --user 0 com.moan.cloudservices
pm uninstall --user 0 com.duokan.einkreader
pm uninstall --user 0 com.mgs.agingtest
pm uninstall --user 0 com.mgs.factorytest
pm uninstall --user 0 com.softwinner.dragonfire
pm uninstall --user 0 com.softwinner.dragonaging
pm uninstall --user 0 com.softwinner.awmanager
pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.email
pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.printspooler
pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.backupconfirm
pm disable-user --user 0 com.android.phone
pm disable-user --user 0 com.android.mms.service
pm disable-user --user 0 com.goodix.rawdata
Thanks for stopping by.